


it's nice (to have a friend)

by elisu



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Gen, Meet-Cute, Park Jisung (NCT)-centric, Quarantine, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:06:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26279890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisu/pseuds/elisu
Summary: “I want to fall in love,” Jisung says, and it’s the most shameless thing he’s ever said, but as soon as he lets it out he thinks he can see the picture a little clearer. “I want to make noodles from scratch. And own a cat.”Renjun smiles at the slowly setting sun. “And play outside in the snow.”In which Jisung meets his neighbour for the first time, and it happens to be out on his apartment's fire escape. (In the age of social distancing).
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Park Jisung
Comments: 18
Kudos: 85





	it's nice (to have a friend)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arisfocis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arisfocis/gifts).



> dear silver: i was going to post this on your birthday but i decided now just seemed like a Good Time. you know? after That conversation we had last week i was left feeling Inspired and word vomited this out in an hour or two. your impact! 
> 
> dear silver and everyone else: you know bestdressed on youtube? her new york apartment? that's where jisung lives.

Jisung shuts his laptop on yet another unfinished document and slides his chair away from his desk, stretching out his arms and letting out a prolonged sigh. He’s lost count of how long he’s been stuck in here, the days and nights and in-betweens all blurring at the edges until they’d formed one tiring, long gap of uncertainty. A question mark-shaped period of time that’s made him feel restlessness like he’s never felt it before. 

  
  


His bedroom feels so empty but impossibly claustrophobic at the same time, as if there’s a quarantine-induced bubble he’s found himself trapped in that he’s desperate for someone to stick their (masked) head into. Anyone. 

  
  


He walks over to sprawl himself out onto his twin-sized bed, not sure how to feel about the fact that even  _ that _ has grown uncomfortably small for him during this confusing time. “Look at you, being a hormonal teenager and getting growth spurts,” Yeji (the noona by two years) had said, when they were standing next to each other and plating up rice, and had come to the realisation that “if we bonked heads, you’d break my nose.” Sure enough, they had found this to be correct. (The former— although the head-bonking could be tested, with consent.) Their mother had made them shuffle up next to the markings on the wall and pencil up their new heights. (While Yeji had only grown one centimetre since last time, Jisung had expanded by an impressive five). 

  
  


And hence the fact that while in starfish position, his feet hang off the edges a little. 

  
  


This won’t do, Jisung thinks miserably to himself, sitting up on top of the covers. He’ll go mad if he has to stew in his own company for any longer. 

  
  


Then he walks a lap around his room, and over to the window next to his desk (on top of which, has…  _ quite  _ the collection of mugs he has yet to bring back to the kitchen). (What did Yeji say?  _ Stinky teenage boy _ ). The window hasn’t been opened in ages, but Jisung gathers all his stinky teenage arm strength to push the knob and slide up the metal frame. A gust of wind filters into his room from the outside, and he doesn’t know  _ why _ he’s surprised, but New York smells fresher than he’s probably ever experienced it before. 

  
  


Stinky teenage impulse tells him to push it open even further, even though the logical side of his brain tuts and warns him that if he can’t get this thing to close afterwards, he’s sleeping with cold feet tonight. By some miracle, the pane slides up smoothly and he feels a sense of victory as he’s met with a fully open window. 

  
  


But no, Jisung discovers. Stinky teenage impulse does not stop there. The call of the fire escape stairs rings clear in his mind, and before he knows it, he’s sitting on the steely black fire escape landing outside of his bedroom window. It’s a little cramped at first, he finds, but after a considerable amount of shuffling around and re-adjusting of limbs he makes himself comfortable in the small space. 

  
  


Nobody’s company but his own, and the empty city.

  
  


It’s a rather cheesy metaphor to make, but being so high up with all these beams around him makes Jisung feel like a bird in a cage. 

  
  


“A what?” he hears an unfamiliar voice chirp. Jisung turns his head in the direction of the sound, and finds that sitting in the fire escape next door to his is a boy around his age. 

  
  


He blinks, not knowing how to react. Heck, quarantine really has made him more socially awkward than he already is. Opening his mouth to speak, and then closing it, he blushes and looks down. (Not a great idea. Now he’s suddenly hyper-aware of the height he’s at.)

“Sorry,” the boy says, eyes smiling through a sip of whatever’s in the blue mug he’s holding with both hands. “I shouldn’t have interrupted. Carry on.” 

  
  


“Oh no, no,” Jisung says quickly, eyes widened as he shakes his head. “I was just…” He feels the blush creep in for the second time, “just thinking out loud.” 

  
  


If he’s not mistaken, the boy next door doesn’t look offended or weirded-out. Jisung hasn’t had proper social contact outside of his home for the past who knows how many months, but if he’s correct, the boy looks almost amused. Endeared? Maybe both, if he’s optimistic. The boy smiles again and nods. 

  
  


Silence. 

  
  


Oh. Maybe he should keep talking. 

  
  


“I was thinking… I feel kind of like a... bird in a cage. It’s my first time sitting out here, and all these like… bars and things. This is probably how birds feel.” He feels himself getting borderline rambly, so he decides to stop there. 

  
  


No?

  
  


The boy nods at him, presumably to keep talking. Oh boy. Jisung is about to make another bad first impression. 

  
  


“I’ve just been inside for so long,” Jisung continues to blurt out. “Oh, I mean you have, too. Have you? Oh, um, I mean hopefully you have. I just feel like I need to run around or fly away or something. Oh my god that’s another metaphor…”

  
  


He braves making eye contact with the boy again, to find that he hasn’t stopped smiling. 

  
  


_ Oh _ , he thinks, relieved.  _ Thank goodness.  _

  
  


“H-how about you?” Jisung manages to say. “What’s your name?”

  
  


The boy sets his mug on the windowsill and shifts around to face Jisung. “I’m Renjun, nice to meet you.”

  
  


“Renjun,” Jisung repeats as best as he can, tasting the sounds and syllables in his mouth slowly before letting them out into the open. “Are you Chinese?”

  
  


“I am,” Renjun replies. “And your family’s Korean?”

  
  


‘Mhm,” Jisung says. “How old are you?”

  
  


“Twenty.”

  
  


“Oh!” Jisung exclaims. “You’re the same age as my sister. Do you live alone?”

  
  


“I do. I moved into this place when I transferred to do college in New York but… I guess those plans went out the window.” Jisung fights the urge to say, “Quite literally. We are both outside our windows right now.” He fails, but succeeds at least in making Renjun laugh. 

  
  


“Are you in college, too?” He asks. 

  
  


“Nope. I’m in my last year of high school. What are you studying?”

  
  


“Art history and English,” Renjun says, a wistful look in his eyes, then asks, “Do you have any idea of what you want to do after high school?” 

  
  


And that’s the thing. He doesn’t, not even a clue. “With these results, Jisung, you can pretty much pick whatever course you want,” the careers counsellor had told him, much to his parents’ delight and his own horror. They’d told him to pick what made him happy, or what he was passionate about (neither of which had sparked any clarity in his mind, only leaving him a little more confused than before. What  _ was _ he passionate about? What is the meaning of life? Does life  _ have _ meaning…?) Then they’d told him that they would be very happy if he went into medicine (no pressure, but they’d been disappointed enough when Yeji picked dance as her major… maybe not another arts kid if that was okay with him. But no pressure.)

  
  


“Did I make you existential?” Renjun says, as Jisung stares blankly at the skyline. He’s broken from his train of thought. “Oh. Um… yeah?”

  
  


“Sorry about that.” And somehow, Jisung feels worse than before. 

  
  


“No, no. Don’t be.” 

  
  


Being in this little quarantine bubble has made Jisung more selfish than he’d like to admit. How tiring it must be to have to live in your own thoughts all the time. Jisung’s forgotten how it feels to be in the open and experience the world, instead of his own four walls every hour of the day. He feels terrible for this new friend he’s made. How exciting it must have been for Renjun, to move all the way to the city for something he loves, and then be cooped up in his apartment not being able to do it. At least Jisung has Yeji, and his parents. 

  
  


“So.” Renjun says, reaching over to grab his mug and take another swig from it. “Covid restrictions are easing a little starting tomorrow.”

  
  


Jisung knows. Not first-hand (he’s started to avoid news outlets and social media completely given how anxious getting bad news all the time has been making him), but from his parents. He expects nothing much will change. It will just be him in his room again while the case numbers continue to rise. 

  
  


“Are you planning to do anything different?” 

  
  


“I’m taking a train home tomorrow, actually. Back to my family’s house.” 

  
  


Jisung doesn’t know why this saddens him so much, but it does. It hits him like a truck, and before he can process the emotions that wash over him, tears spring to his eyes and he’s blinking them away as discreetly as he can. 

  
  


“It’s okay,” Renjun says, sensing his upset that shows embarrassingly clearly on his face, probably. “I can always come back.”

  
  


Jisung nods, and a tear falls out. _ Shit.  _ Now he’s actually crying. 

  
  


Renjun chuckles fondly, then turns to face the skyline, and all that falls beyond it. The clouds gather in clusters today, soft around the edges like the look in his eyes. Jisung takes his glasses off to wipe his own and stares at the blurred view. 

  
  


“I’ll be back in no time.”

  
  


“Was it your dream?” Jisung asks, as his tears stop running and the city comes back into focus when he puts his glasses back on. “Coming here?”

  
  


“It was.” The far-off look returns to Renjun’s face, and he tilts his head to the side to stare at the sunlight-gilded clouds. “But I have other dreams. Dreams like playing the piano in Central Park, or growing a tree in my apartment.” 

  
  


This evokes the most curious feeling in Jisung. Is it the tree? Maybe it’s the tree. Jisung’s always wanted a tree. Or maybe it’s the notion of dreaming that he wants. The little parts of a big picture that he can’t seem to visualise. Maybe Jisung’s never had tangible goals for measurable success, but he’s been chasing after all the wrong dreams all this time. 

  
  


“I want to fall in love,” Jisung says, and it’s the most shameless thing he’s ever said, but as soon as he lets it out he thinks he can see the picture a little clearer. “I want to make noodles from scratch. And own a cat.”

  
  


Renjun smiles at the slowly setting sun. “And play outside in the snow.”

  
  


“Sleep under the stars.”

  
  


“Do that lantern thing they do in Taiwan. You know, where you write something on the paper skin and set it off into the night sky and it looks so cool… you know what I mean?” Jisung knows. 

  
  


“But I also want…” Jisung says, voice trailing off as he looks back down at his legs crossed on the fire escape landing, “financial stability.”

  
  


“And the parents to be proud.” Renjun adds. 

  
  


“Maybe being able to take naps in the middle of the day and not die.”

  
  


“I’m in college and I do that- oh. You said not die,” Renjun mutters, and they both laugh. 

  
  


It’s nice, this is. Pouring your heart out to a stranger. Jisung can’t remember the last time he felt this…  _ at peace _ . There’s an ambulance’s siren that goes off in the distance, and it reminds him all over again of the times they’re in currently, but being out here and talking to Renjun brings him a sense of comfort he didn’t know he’d been craving for a long time. 

  
  


They talk for a while more, as the sky descends on the city in shades of blush and purple. Jisung recalls Yeji’s oil pastels phase in elementary school, and how they’d draw together in the living room on sheets of notepad paper. This view right now reminds him of that. Of all the colours mixing together in a carefully illustrated scenery. Currently the way things are moving makes Jisung feel like this year’s events have been decided by a child drawing lines for fun. The ups, the downs-- each instance unpredictable and somehow worse than the last. He hopes the hypothetical kid is enjoying himself, because  _ he’s _ sure not. 

  
  


Talking to Renjun puts things into perspective, though. In the midst of all this carnage and tragedy he’s found that it’s nice to just talk to someone about nothing and everything and everything in between. 

  
  


Jisung feels a little pang of regret for not having tried to get to know Renjun earlier. He’d been too caught up in his own everyday life, too busy to even realise that a friend was a door away, all along. Should he feel grateful, then, for having been able to meet him just in time? Tomorrow Renjun will be long gone and Jisung will be alone again, and Jisung will be lucky to have known him. 

  
  


Maybe instead of planting a tree in a jar, Jisung wants to capture a memory. This particular one. He wants to bottle up this feeling and this sunset and maybe this new friend too and screw on the lid tight so it can last forever. 

  
  


“Jisung,” Renjun says, arms crossed on the beam next to him. Jisung does the same on his side and leans in to listen. “Have you ever had a penpal?”

  
  


“I haven’t, no.”

  
  


“Would you like to write letters to me? And me to write letters to you?”

  
  


Jisung thinks the idea is utterly romantic. He tells Renjun so, which makes him laugh. “I think so too. I think it would be nice to keep in touch, wouldn’t it? I like you a lot.”

  
  


Now Jisung has to pretend that he’s weak in the knees because of his apparent fear of heights and not the last part of what Renjun’s just said. This is fine. He is fine.  _ Now he has to act like it. _

  
  


“Yeah. I like you a lot, too.” (???)  _ Or maybe not. _

  
  


Renjun throws his head back and laughs like a child and Jisung thinks it’s a good thing. (He’s a little proud of himself for making him laugh like that.)

  
  


“I’ll write down my address and pass it to you?” Jisung suggests, ready to climb back into his room and find a pen and some paper, then, “oh. We are neighbours. You know my address. Right, cool cool cool.”  _ Society when Jisung stops being an embarrassment… he would like to see it.  _

  
  


The other boy beams and nods in reply. He chuckles. “You’re cute.” Now this,  _ this _ is ridiculous. 

From inside the house, Yeji is yelling at Jisung to come and eat dinner and their mother is yelling at Yeji to stop being so loud when she’s capable of walking ten meters to his room to tell him properly. Jisung agrees. 

  
  


“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Jisung says, and all the emotions start to rush in again. “I hope you have a safe trip tomorrow.”

  
  


“It was lovely being able to meet you too, Jisung. And I’ll make sure to wear a mask and try not to touch too many surfaces.”

  
  


“That’s good. Well, bye for now.”

  
  


At that, Jisung gets back onto his feet, climbs back into his bedroom and goes to dinner. 

  
  
  
  


And Renjun stays out there at the fire escape, just a little longer. 

**Author's Note:**

> lmk if you liked this <3 [twt](https://twitter.com/dreamscng)


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